There was a curious grating noise, a creaking of rafters, and before their amazed eyes the wall slid along and disclosed another attic as large as the first.
Jimmie was so bewildered he forgot to pull himself up from the dusty floor, and lay with his head propped against an old trunk looking across the enormous space.
Then everybody began talking at once.
“This looks to me like smugglers,” cried Alfred. “I was in an old house in England, where there was the same sort of wall, only not so large.”
“And look,” called Bab, “there are footsteps in the dust. Who could have been here lately, to have left those marks. Do you see? They come from over there in the right hand corner.”
“Yes, is it not curious,” replied José, “that they are going away from the wall and not approaching it? He must have walked out of the wall. Perhaps there is a secret door there, too.”
They rushed across pell mell, and began thumping the walls, but nothing happened.
“I say, Stephen,” said Martin, “do you suppose we had smugglers in our family?”
“I don’t know,” answered Stephen. “They managed to keep it secret if they had.”
“I’d like to be a smuggler,” cried Martin. “There would be some excitement in life then. But how did you manage to do it, Jimmie? You are always having things happen to you.”